


Defying Convention

by weakinteraction



Category: Telephone - Lady Gaga ft Beyoncé (Music Video)
Genre: Canon-Typical Murder Spree, Canon-typical swearing, Gen, Post-Canon, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24416338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Gaga learned in close, so close that she could smell the sweat from the girl's long shift, under the cheap-but-pretty perfume she used to cover it up.  She held the girl's gaze, not blinking.  She could see the way her eyes kept darting to look at Gaga's eyelashes.  "Just try to imagine," Gaga said eventually.  "What if you had to do ... oh, terrible things to be free to do what you wanted to do?"A quick nod.  She didn't find that too hard to imagine at all."And then imagine ... what if by the time you'd finished, you discovered that the terrible thingswerewhat you wanted to do?"
Comments: 13
Kudos: 10
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	Defying Convention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Gaga sat in the cell, left foot tapping out a rhythm.

Without her needing to say a word, the other prisoners had fallen in with it: their own feet joining in, one even clicking her fingers. The woman with smeared make-up, awaiting her solicitation charge, was strumming her fingers back and forth against the bars. Even the woman in the corner sleeping off her drunk and disorderly charge was snoring in time.

The syncopation was just starting to build when the heavy door that separated the holding cell from the rest of the station swung noisily open.

"Gaga?" the sergeant said. "Your lawyer's here."

Gaga looked up in surprise -- to the best of her knowledge, she didn't _have_ a lawyer. She smiled a goodbye to all the others and strutted out. She heard the tempo fade away into randomness as she stepped away.

When she followed the sergeant through the door, she saw Honey Bee standing in front of the desk. She had on a smart skirt suit and her hair was tied back in a severe ponytail. The only concession to her usual sense of fashion was a pair of very large earrings, interlocking golden triangles that came all the way down to her shoulders.

"I have just been explaining to these fine gentlemen of the law that the unfortunate irregularities in your arrest paperwork mean you have to be freed immediately," Bee said, sounding nothing like her usual self. "They have kindly agreed, albeit in exchange for an undertaking on your part to waive your right to sue for wrongful arrest, pursuant to Section 31 of the state criminal justice code. I explained that that might be possible, provided you had been treated well. Have you been treated well?"

"It's been fine," Gaga said languidly. As cells went, it hadn't been too dirty or too cramped; she definitely rated it in the Top 10 of ones she'd been kept in. She had just enough self-restraint not to say any of that out loud, though; comments like that would run counter to the "wrongful arrest" narrative Bee had clearly masterfully woven.

"Your belongings, ma'am." The cop who put them in front of her looked nervous, the sort of nervous that made Gaga think Bee had threatened to sue the department if anything had been even a tiny bit damaged.

"Thank you," Gaga said, taking out her hat, straightening it out, and pulling it down low over her head, so that she could only just see under the brim.

Bee offered her her arm, and Gaga took it. They strode out of the station together.

* * *

"Exactly how many times am I going to have to get you out of jail, Gaga?" Honey Bee asked as they drove away.

Gaga looked in the rear view mirror, touching up her lipstick by the light of the streetlights as they flashed past them. "Exactly as many times as they put me in there, I guess. Since when are you a lawyer, anyway?"

"There's still a lot you don't know about me, Gaga. Never forget that."

"That's as maybe but I'm, like, 100% sure that you never passed the Bar."

"I passed _a_ bar two blocks back. You want to go for a drink before we leave this town forever?"

"Now you're talking sense," Gaga said.

Bee ran the next red light and used the intersection to swing the Pussy Wagon round in one long drift.

The small screen set into the dashboard sprang into life. "Hold up, Honey Bee," Gaga said. "We may have to take a raincheck." She smiled. "Someone needs our very special brand of help."

* * *

_"Rose, come and take a look at this!"_

_A sigh, a roll of the eyes, but still she enters the room, watches and listens as her little brother explains. "See, look, it's called the Pussy Wagon and whenever it shows up in a town ... something's going to go down. It says that if you know the right address on the Dark Web you can get the Pussy Wagon to come to your town and--"_

_"Suuuure," she says. "They drive around in something really distinctive but have never been caught, and they're like some sort of A Team, but only for people who are on TOR."_

_She looks up for a moment, and through the window sees the exact same vehicle cruising down Main Street, not in grainy black and white but glorious full, really distinctive, colour. Knows she needs to keep him distracted._

_"It's from a film, you dumbass," she says. "Those are film stills that have been doctored."_

_"Nuh uh."_

_"Yuh huh."_

_Rose looks up again. Main Street is empty once more. She smiles to herself._

* * *

They parked up and got out of the car. Bee put on her outsized sunglasses to stop herself from squinting in the glare from all the brightly polished windows.

"Well, this is the place, Gaga." They'd driven all night to get here.

"It sure is a place, Honey Bee." Gaga was already dressed in the maid's uniform -- ostensibly a disguise, although she wore it as though she was about to strut onto a Paris catwalk in it. Bee herself was wearing something not a million miles from what she'd worn to get Gaga out of jail last night, the only concession to the role she would be assuming a small name badge that didn't have her real name on it.

The place was a hotel -- the only hotel in town, unless you counted the smattering of motels out by the Interstate, and the clientele here very definitely did not. It dated back over a hundred years, an opulent building opposite the long-since-torn-down railroad station.

The information they'd received said that this weekend, the hotel was hosting an exclusive, secretive meeting. The men -- and they were all men, to no one's great surprise -- attending would be travelling incognito, without their usual huge entourages. Meeting to discuss ... whatever it was people like them weren't willing to discuss when the little people were around.

"You ready to bring down some of the most selfish motherfuckers on the planet?"

"Ready, willing, and able," Gaga said.

"Then let's get to it."

"When I go low, you go high," Gaga said with a smile, heading towards the staff entrance.

Bee smiled back at her and made her way up the marble steps.

* * *

Bee stepped right on up to the front desk, a broad smile on her face.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, we have no vacancies this weekend," the woman behind the desk said. From behind the sunglasses, Bee was looking at her carefully, noting all the little adjustments she'd have to make to her disguise to fit in. If she could be bothered.

There were over forty bedrooms in the hotel, and only fifteen vehicles in the car park, but that wasn't the counterargument Bee needed. "Oh, I'm sorry for the confusion, I don't need a room, thank you. I'm here to relieve you."

"My shift doesn't finish until six, and then the night--"

"Oh, it's all been arranged through the Federal Relief Concierge Service. I'm sorry if no one told you; there must have been some sort of mix up."

"There's no such thing as the Federal Relief Concierge Service," she said, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"Sure there is," Bee said. "See, here's my credentials." She handed over an envelope.

The woman opened it, saw the plane tickets and the rest. "This is an all expenses paid two week skiing holiday in Aspen."

Bee leaned forward and lowered her voice as though imparting a deep confidence. "The conditions this season are _excellent_."

"I don't ski," she said. "I've never skied."

"But you've always wanted to, right?" Bee said. "And 'all expenses paid' includes lessons."

The woman closed the envelope again, then stepped around the desk. Her eyes narrowed again as she said, "I don't want to know what's going on here, do I?"

"Almost certainly not," Bee agreed with a smile.

"Don't drink the coffee in the break room," the woman said.

She only looked back once as she headed out. "Enjoy Colorado!" Bee said brightly, taking a moment away from hacking into the computer system to give a finger-waggling wave.

* * *

Gaga didn't mind doing the behind the scenes work. She could make a performance out of anything. In each room, she found a different way to pose artfully with her feather duster outstretched: here brushing against a lampshade with a flourish, there stretched on tiptoes to reach into the crevices of the curlicued cornice in the corner of the ceiling.

All these putzes would notice was whether their beds were vaguely straight, and the trashcan emptied. It was the trashcans that interested Gaga most of all. In each room, just for a moment, she dropped the act, and carefully photographed the things they had discarded in them with her smartphone, looking around to ensure she wouldn't be disturbed before quickly and discreetly taking the shot.

CLICK. Well over a billion dollars' worth of insider trading.

CLICK. A complex network of offshore accounts.

CLICK. Discussions of the suppression of evidence of an intimidation campaign against journalists.

And on it went -- all so very, very careless. Sometimes there were thumb drives as well, and she connected them to her phone with a little cable that she otherwise kept hidden under the prim of her peaked cap, cloned the contents quickly, and moved on.

No one ever interrupted her -- they were all down in the Melbourne Conference Room, attending what the schedule for the day called the "afternoon plenary session". After that was done, they'd return to their rooms to change for dinner, which was being provided by an outside caterer.

The plan was, so far, working perfectly. She had every confidence that Bee was, if anything, ahead of schedule.

The most complicated bit was up to her, though. Having finished her cleaning, she made her way down into the basement. Instantly alert, she started tracking the pipes along the walls, and clocked the location of the generator. Not that she was interested in it for itself, but for its fuel.

"Oh, hey," came a voice. "Are you looking for the break room?"

The speaker was dressed in a uniform issued by the hotel that looked almost exactly the same as, and yet completely different from, Gaga's own outfit.

"Er, yeah, sure," Gaga said. "I just got a little lost."

"It's back up here," the maid said. "I guess you must be new."

"Yeah, very new."

"I mean, don't get me wrong, the break room's a shithole, but it's not quite so much of a shithole as down here. I'm Rose, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Rose."

As Rose led through up a complicated maze of back passages and plain staircases, she chattered away. "We haven't had anyone new in quite a while. I've been working here years -- started when I was in high school, summer and weekends. And then vacations when I was back from college. And then ... well, you know, 'it's a blessing to have any job in this economy'." She said the last in a deep voice, as though she was quoting someone -- her father, most likely.

Gaga realised she'd stopped, and that she needed to say something. The girl had been talking about college, hadn't she? "What was your major?"

"Computational Biochemistry," Rose said.

"I can see how that's relevant to a career in the hospitality industry," Gaga said with a sage nod.

"Anyway, in here," Rose said, opening the door.

The break room was, indeed, a shithole. Cheap plastic chairs were squeezed in too tight around formica-topped tables. A jug of filter coffee sat on a worktop next to a plate of stale biscuits and fruit just that little bit too far past ripe, presumably the leftovers from upstairs.

Gaga took one of the mugs and poured herself a coffee. "What is _wrong_ with this?" she said a moment later, spitting out the mouthful she had just swigged.

"Oh, yeah," Rose said, "you shouldn't drink the coffee."

"You should get home," Gaga said. "Your shift's over now, right?" Her mind was already whirring, working out the best ways to get her to leave. Bee would already have dismissed all the other staff, if everything was going to plan.

It wasn't as though there hadn't been innocent victims caught up in their escapades before now, but there was something aesthetically displeasing to Gaga about having just _one_. Either do it cleanly, or do it extremely messily -- nothing in between.

Rose didn't move. "You're her, aren't you?" she said, eventually. "I mean ... you're one of them?"

Gaga smiled. "I don't have the faintest idea _what_ you're talking about," she said, momentarily affecting a cut-glass English accent.

Rose swallowed. "I'm the one who called you. I mean, contacted you. With the ... thing. The form on the IP address. They come here every year and ... I guess I just couldn't stand it any more."

"You used precautions, right?"

Rose looked at her as though she'd asked her about her sex life.

"On the computer," Gaga clarified. "You did it with the proxies and the deleting your history and all the other shit." She only followed about one word in three of what Bee said about their online arrangements, but she'd said those particular ones so often that they'd sunk in.

"Then you should _definitely_ get home." Gaga winked heavily. "You don't want to be suspected of having been involved, do you?" she said lightly.

"But ... you have to tell me. How did you end up doing this?"

Gaga learned in close, so close that she could smell the sweat from the girl's long shift, under the cheap-but-pretty perfume she used to cover it up. She held the girl's gaze, not blinking. She could see the way her eyes kept darting to look at Gaga's eyelashes. "Just try to imagine," Gaga said eventually. "What if you had to do ... oh, terrible things to be free to do what you wanted to do?"

A quick nod. She didn't find that too hard to imagine at all.

"And then imagine ... what if by the time you'd finished, you discovered that the terrible things _were_ what you wanted to do?"

There was the ghost of a smile on Rose's lips, but she said, "I should get home."

"Good choice, sweetheart."

* * *

Bee was dealing with a lot of irate customers. Something had gone terribly, _terribly_ wrong with the keycards and it seemed that none of them were able to get back into their rooms.

"I'm extremely sorry, sir," she said, faking sincerity very well indeed, if she did say so herself. "If you'll just wait here a moment more, I'll see what I can do." She made a show of running the keycard through the machine she had already sabotaged, yet again. "I'm really sorry, it's not normally like this--"

"Never mind him," said the man behind, waving his own keycard. "I need to get back into my room urgently."

Her current customer turned on him. "You _do_ know who I am, don't you? I probably own majority stock in every company you've ever invested a cent in, you jumped-up--"

"Gentlemen, _please_!" Bee said, though she was inwardly enjoying the fact that they couldn't restrain themselves from being entitled even amongst themselves. It never hurt matters for your victims to demonstrate plainly why they deserved it. "We will deal with all of you in good time." She was counting up the number of people in the lobby -- the mysterious problem with the doors had brought thirteen guests down. Just two more to go.

Then she saw Gaga coming down the stairs, the last two men in front of her. Quite how she had got them to join the others she didn't want to guess, but it had clearly been effective.

Gaga gave her a nod, and Bee brought out the shotgun from underneath the desk. She'd retrieved it from the Pussy Wagon once everything else was in place, but before they'd begun to emerge from their meeting.

Bee cocked it, and instantly had all the men's attention. "I _said_ , 'Gentlemen, please!'" She fired at the ceiling, and broken shards of plaster rained down on the heads of the gathered guests, who, almost without realising it, had formed a cluster in the middle of the lobby.

Sometimes, she hated having to be so unsubtle. But today was not one of those times.

She stepped out from behind the desk as Gaga finished coming down the stairs, throwing Bee a handful of cable ties as she did so. Bee caught them one handed. "Now then, _gentlemen_ , I'd like you all to sit back to back with each other in groups of three."

Gaga was already pushing the ones nearest to her together and cable tying their wrists to each other behind their backs, crossing their arms over so that all three were entangled.

Now was the moment when, if any of them were going to make an attempt to escape, or even disarm her, it would happen. Now that they could see that the threat was real.

None of them did. The moment passed, and she began cable tying the ones nearest her while Gaga moved on to another group.

In less than a minute, they were all tied up.

"Did you find what you were looking for downstairs?" Bee asked.

"I sure did," said Gaga. She wandered away insouciantly, and came back from the entrance to the staff areas with two jerrycans -- the fuel for the hotel's emergency generator. She passed one to Bee, who slung the shotgun over her shoulder before taking it.

They bowed theatrically to one another, and then began pouring out the gasoline onto the deep red carpet, walking away from each other in a wide circle around the tied up men.

"You can't do this!" one of them said, altogether too late.

"But we already are," Gaga said. "In case you hadn't noticed." She paused in pouring the gasoline to blow him an ironic kiss.

"What do you want?" another said. "Is it money? We have money. We can give you ... anything you want."

"We have as much as we need already," Gaga said. "Don't we, Honey Bee?"

Honey Bee nodded. "More than enough."

"But, then ... why?" A plaintive moan from the one who had been 'don't you know who I am?'-ing one of the others just a few minutes earlier.

"You've all been bad boys," Honey Bee said sternly.

" _Very_ bad," Gaga said, adding archly, "You should see what I found in their rooms, Honey Bee." She held out her smartphone, the camera roll displaying all the photos she'd taken. And the little ticks in the corner displaying that they'd been shared. Then she swiped across to the data dumps.

Even the ones who hadn't been panicking the whole time since Bee had brought out the gun were agitated now. "You can't do this! It's entrapment, or an illegal search, or ... something."

"Well, _duh_ ," Honey Bee said. "So is blowing all you motherfuckers sky high, but you can rest assured that we're going to do that too." She could smell the escaping gas now, from the various different places Gaga had broken or wrenched free the pipework downstairs.

She and Gaga had reached the opposite side of the circle from where they had started.

"Are you ready to blow this joint?" Gaga asked.

"In every sense," Bee replied.

They carried on pouring the gasoline out as they headed towards the ornate revolving door.

"Cigarette, Gaga?" Bee asked. Glancing behind, she could see some of the men starting to struggle free, even one group trying to walk together, crab style, out of the circle.

"I hear they're terribly bad for the health," Gaga said as she took one from Bee. They leaned in together so that Gaga could light both from the same flick of her lighter flame, before she tossed it away.

The fire streaked away behind them as they walked out of the hotel.

They had just made it to the Pussy Wagon on the other side of the street when the gas explosion ignited, blowing out all the windows.

"There you go again, looking back at the explosion," Bee admonished as Gaga turned.

"I like to watch the flames dancing," Gaga said.

"Get in," Bee said.

Gaga did so. As Bee climbed in on the other side, stowed the shotgun and then gunned the engine, she watched Gaga stretching back contentedly in her seat, like a cat that was extremely pleased with itself. Then, quite uncharacteristically, she began to wriggle from side to side, as though the seat wasn't quite right underneath her.

"Honey Bee?" Gaga said after a minute or so of this strange behaviour.

"Yes, Gaga?"

"I do believe we have a stowaway."

"A what now?"

A young woman Bee didn't recognise climbed out from the passenger footwell behind Gaga.

"This is Rose," Gaga said. "She was our ... client?"

"But now I'd like to be your partner," the new arrival said, managing to muster more courage in her voice than Bee could see in her eyes in the rear view mirror.

"I thought I told you to get home," Gaga said.

"Nothing much for me at home," Rose said. "And you just blew up my place of employment."

"I suppose we did at that," Gaga said.

"Are you in the market for a new recruit?" Rose asked hopefully.

"Rose is a Computational Biochemist," Gaga said. "By training."

"So you're good with computers?" Bee said.

"Uh huh, I guess," Rose said.

" _I'm_ good with computers."

"I would never dream of disputing that for a second. But ... I know a bunch of other stuff, too."

Bee rolled her eyes. "OK, Gaga, we can keep her."

Rose downright squealed, and for a moment Bee thought she might be making a terrible mistake.

"You know what this means, though, right?" Bee said, in her mock-stern voice.

"What does it mean?" Gaga asked.

"I get to be Queen Bee now."

Gaga stretched back in her seat; now that Rose was sitting in the back properly, she could do so easily. "That sounds absolutely fine by me."

* * *

_It's been months since his sister disappeared. Life is quieter without Rose. He misses her, not that he'd admit it if she were to suddenly reappear in the doorway. His parents don't talk about it, except for the one time his mom said sadly, "She could have at least written, to let us know she was OK."_

_Other than that, he still spends most of his free time on the Internet, falling down rabbit holes that tie together creepypastas with genuine mysteries with overblown conspiracy theories. And so it's pretty inevitable that after a long while he finds himself back in the same network of blogs and videos that discuss the Pussy Wagon._

_The most recent video, though, of what was alleged to be a "reverse bank heist", contains pictures of the Pussy Wagon's occupants, magnified from grainy stills in which it's unclear whether they're clambering out or getting back in._

_He doesn't recognise them as any actors he's ever seen._ In your face, Rose! _he thinks._

_And just at that moment, the third picture comes up._

Your face, Rose.

_He pauses. Rewinds, pauses again. Repeats the whole process a few more times. The image quality's terrible, but he'd recognise her anywhere._

_"Mooooom!" he yells. "You're not going to believe this ..."_

THE BEGINNING


End file.
